JUPITER, Fla. – If Alex Rodriguez does return from this hip injury without undergoing surgery, you can expect to see a different A-Rod – the same Rodriguez I saw early Tuesday morning in the hitting tunnels here at the Cardinals’ complex.

Rodriguez will not be the same kind of power hitter he was in the past. He may still hit with power, but he’s not going to be the same slugger who blasted 54 home runs in 2007.

The torn labrum in his right hip will not allow such action.

Expect Rodriguez to focus on hitting the ball the other way, to right field. He will still be able to turn on certain pitches but will not have the same torque as in the past. In the tunnel that morning, Rodriguez was almost Derek Jeter-like, hitting the ball the other way, pitch after pitch.

He is out of the WBC, and his Dominican teammates are disheartened by the news. They said they had no clue A-Rod was in such bad shape, and, evidently, A-Rod really didn’t know, either.

He hosted a party for his teammates at the house he was renting here this week, and his final words to manager Felipe Alou and team captain Moises Alou were: “See you Thursday.”

That was Tuesday night.

Early Tuesday morning A-Rod was in those tunnels. He was engrossed in the flip drill, in which a coach puts the screen about 10 feet in front of the hitter and flips pitch after pitch. Each time A-Rod would let the ball travel deep and hit it the other way into the netting on the right side.

At the time I thought he was simply working on a spring training drill.

In the game that day, A-Rod struck out swinging, lifted a soft fly to center and drilled an opposite-field double to right. Rodriguez, who usually loves to talk about every nuance of an at-bat, glossed over a question about that double. Perhaps he did not want to alert anyone to his hip problem, thinking his doctor’s visit to Colorado was nothing serious. Surgery remains a possibility.

“I spoke to Alex early this afternoon,” Dominican Republic GM Stan Javier said after the 4-1 loss to the Cardinals. “He told me he might have surgery Sunday or Monday.”

Something else was different about Rodriguez this week, too. Standing behind the batting cage on the practice field Monday, he took turns bringing each leg high up to the back bar of the cage, a ballerina-like move. He was stretching to try to loosen the tightness in his hip.

“He’s going to have to make some hitting adjustments, and he is capable of doing that,” said someone close to A-Rod. “It will be interesting.”

Fellow WBC teammates said it was tough to lose A-Rod.

“That’s a guy we are going to miss,” said Robinson Cano.

“It’s crazy, that’s the guy we need,” David Ortiz said. “I just hope he gets better and gets back to the regular season and does his thing.”

In a spring that has delivered one Perfect Storm of trouble after another to Rodriguez, he now will have to remake his swing. Consider it yet another challenge for A-Rod.